Home Assistant released version 2026.9 on 2 September 2026, putting home-network visibility front and center. A new Matter network map shows, for the first time, which devices talk over Thread and which rely on Wi-Fi.
The Matter fabric as a map
A new “Show map” button in the Matter panel visualizes how devices connect. Thread and Wi-Fi nodes are drawn separately, border routers are flagged, and signal strength is expressed through the color and thickness of each link. For mixed setups, it becomes obvious at a glance where a Thread mesh is weak or a border router is missing – information that was previously hard to infer.
Security dashboard and automation tracing
The security dashboard gains an “Active alerts” section that surfaces urgent events such as open doors or triggered smoke detectors, each tagged with a severity level. In the Activity view, every state change can now be traced back to the automation that caused it, with clickable steps and millisecond-precise timestamps.
Modbus without YAML
Integrations can now set up Modbus devices through the UI instead of hand-editing YAML registers. New charts also add keyboard navigation and sonification for accessible data readouts.
Source: Home Assistant blog, “2026.9: There’s room on this bus” (2 September 2026): home-assistant.io.
